1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to virtual online communities and more particularly to a system and method of providing resource information in a virtual online community.
2. Description of Related Art
With the rapid development of the Internet and web technology, web browsing has become a part of modern life. Many people browse the Internet at work, from home, or both. More and more people are spending more and more time browsing the web. According to some statistics, the Internet and the World Wide Web have become an important source of information for those browsing the Internet.
However, most web browsing activities are done individually, with no interaction with other users. For example, when a person is visiting a web page, the person has no idea that another person may also be browsing the same web page at the same time. Some web pages do support online forums to allow online users to participate in online communities and to communicate with each other. However the communication is limited because both users have to access and logon to a same web server first.
Other approaches supporting online discussions, such as Microsoft discussion servers, allow a group of users to collaborate online. One solution includes a web server that allows users to discuss web pages stored in the web server. Another solution allows users to share files on the same web page, send messages to each other or conduct job related or similar activities by means of collaboration servers. Most of these collaborations are used in office environments or require some modification in the server side.
United States Patent Application Publication No. 20030101227 to Fink, entitled “Message collaborator”, discloses a message collaborator system and method that establishes a relationship with more than one sender and a recipient. Directives are contained in the profile defining each of the relationships and how information is to be filtered or established into or out of a message. Rules are provided for collaborating all of these profiles in order to pull content from multiple sources remotely or from local databases containing content from the more than one sender, collecting the content into a single, comprehensive message and then delivering the single, comprehensive message to the recipient. The disclosed system relates to collaboration and to rules used in a local system and does not relate to resource based virtual communities or to the collaborative modification of resources.
United States Patent Application Publication No. 20030158897 to Ben-Natan et al., entitled “Networked platform for creating and supporting communities”, discloses a system for defining communities and matching users into the communities. The matched users gain access to one or more elements associated with the communities. The system comprises a host connected to a network for communication with a plurality of users, the host being configured for creating at least one community by defining attributes for each of the communities. The host defines one or more elements associated with each of the communities and assigns attributes to a user, the attributes extracted from information associated with the user. The host also matches the attributes of at least one user to attributes of at least one community and assigns the user to the community based on the result of the matching, the user thereby gaining access to at least one element associated with the community. The disclosed communities are not dynamic.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,915,336 to Hankejh entitled, “Real time Internet communication system”, discloses a real time Internet communication system. The system allows users to collaborate on the fly, and without having to own or download any programs that then stay resident on the user's computer. The system is marketed using a business system that makes highly productive software available to businesses and end users, but which is not purchased by customers or end users, has no conventional distribution system, and never requires update, installation or rollout by the customer or end user. Although the disclosed system provides a system for enabling simultaneous web browsing and real-time chat functions, it is limited to allowing users engaged in web chatting to view a same web page
U.S. Pat. No. 6,912,573 to Ohkado et al. entitled “Method for acquiring content information, and software product, collaboration system and collaboration server for acquiring content information”, discloses a method in which a customer browser and an agent browser are connected to each other through a collaboration server, and a Web server is controlled so as to be accessed through the collaboration server. When the browsers refer to a page, the collaboration server embeds an applet for detecting a change in the page and a client controller for displaying a page corresponding to changed page information of the other party which performs collaboration. When the customer and agent browsers detect the change in the page, the applet is invoked, and the changed page information is sent to the other party via the collaboration server, and the client controller on the other party controls the browser so as to display the changed page. The disclosed method uses the collaboration server and the applet to detect page changes but does not disclose ways for users to comment on web pages and modify the contents thereof.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,507,865 to Hanson et al. entitled “Method and system for group content collaboration”, discloses a method and system that can be used to support content collaboration among a group of participants connected to a network. A participant creates an electronic form specifying the content and a list of network addresses corresponding to other participants in the content collaboration. A server receives the form and includes resources for delivering an electronic mail message associated with an electronic medium associated with the content collaboration. When the participant opens the message, the electronic medium is produced by the server that includes static and dynamic regions. The participant can modify or change the content. The dynamic regions are asynchronously updated in the server and indicate the current content of the electronic medium that can be accessed by other participants. The content may be binary or textual.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,505,233 to Hanson et al. entitled “Method for communicating information among a group of participants”, discloses a method that can be used to communicate information among a group of participants. A participant may create an electronic form specifying a list of network addresses corresponding to other participants intended to receive the communication. A server receives the form and delivers a message associated with an electronic medium. When the participant opens the message, the electronic medium is produced by the server and includes static and dynamic content. The participant can add content to the dynamic content. The dynamic content may be asynchronously dynamically updated in the server to indicate a then current content of the electronic medium, and can be accessed by other to participants in the group. The patents to Hanson et al. relate to ways of starting collaborations among participants and do not relate to resource based virtual communities or to the collaborative modification of resources.
A resource based virtual community is described in co-owned and co-pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/710,964, filed on Aug. 15, 2004 entitled “Resource Based Virtual Communities”, the disclosure of which is herein incorporated by reference in its entirety. The described resource based virtual community allows any person from anywhere in the world to meet with other users who are browsing a same web page at the same time by dynamically participating in the resource based virtual communities in real time. Users can automatically join the virtual communities while surfing the web and become members of the virtual communities. A member can conduct collaborative work with other members who are visiting the same web resource.
While the resource based virtual community provides the described advantages, there remains a need in the art for a system and method of providing resource modification in a virtual community that allows for collaboration on sub elements of a community resource. Such resource sub elements may include titles, paragraphs, sentences, pictures, words, and combinations of these elements. There is also a need for a system and method that provides a means whereby members of the virtual community can modify the community resources. There is a further need for a system and method that provides virtual community members with information such as the number of current members using a particular resource or other relevant information enabling community members to decide whether to access the particular resource.